Damage Control

by John Gilstrap

  The henchman didn’t appreciate the affront to his masculinity. “I will tell him,” he said. “It is your life to lose.” He returned to Felix’s table, and Maria forced herself to return her eyes to the newspaper from which she hadn’t read a word.

  She heard laughter from Felix’s table, and then about a minute later, a shadow fell across her paper. Its owner said, “Excuse me.”

  Maria looked up to see Felix Hernandez looking down at her, his arms folded across his chest. “May I sit down?” he asked.

  Maria folded her paper to make room and gestured to the chair opposite hers. “Please,” she said.

  Felix pulled the chair out and sat, his forearms resting on the table. He leaned in close. “My friend tells me that you know who I am,” he said, “yet you are unimpressed.”

  “If that is what he told you, then your friend is a coward.” She had never been in such close proximity to a murderer before. She’d expected the eyes of a beast, of a predator, but instead saw amused softness.

  Felix smiled. “So, coward is your word of the day, is it? First you use it in reference to me, and now you use it in reference to my friend.”

  Maria gave a coy smile. “So he told you,” she said. “And you are here. You have proven me wrong twice.”

  He laughed and sat back in his chair. He crossed his legs and folded his arms again. Maria would later come to recognize this as his most thoughtful pose. “You are a beautiful woman,” he said. “And though I might not impress you, I assure you that you impress me. What is your name?”

  “Maria Elizondo,” she said. The name was pure fiction, adopted in case Felix actually remembered any of the names of the children he’d murdered.

  “A beautiful name,” he said. Then he stood. He bowed slightly from the waist and said, “Maria Elizondo, would you please do me the distinct honor of joining me at my table for coffee?” There was no hint of threat in his tone. In fact, he seemed genuinely charmed.

  Maria stood and—

  She jumped as the phone in her hand rang. Snapped back to the reality of the present, she wondered if she’d perhaps fallen asleep. It rang again. The incoming number was blocked from her caller ID. Maria slid the phone open and brought it to her ear. “Hola.”

  A woman’s angst-filled voice said, “Oh, dear God, please tell me that you speak English.”

  “Who is this?” Maria asked in English.

  “Are you Maria Elizondo?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Let’s please not play this game,” the voice said. “I need you to go first.”

  Maria hesitated, assessing the degree of threat this call might pose. Finally, she said, “Yes, this is Maria Elizondo.”

  “Good. You can call me Mother Hen.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yeah, I know it’s a stupid name, but it is what it is. I got this number from your FBI contact.”

  “And that is supposed to make me trust you?” Maria scoffed.

  “Actually, I don’t care. All I know is that your time in Mexico is about to come to an end, and that you’re going to escort my boss and a couple of others out of there.” She paused as if awaiting a response, but when Maria didn’t offer one, Mother Hen went on, “There’s been a complication.”

  Maria’s heart fell. This was when they would tell her that she was on her own.

  “You’re surrounded by a lot of soldiers, and that’s going to make it very difficult to get you out of there.”

  “How many people are with your friend?” Maria asked.

  “They’re three in all, but one of them is just a boy.”

  “Two people, then?” Maria pressed her hand to her forehead. “So, we are finished,” she said.

  “Heavens no, you’re not finished,” Mother Hen said.

  “But with only two—”

  “They’re a very special two,” Mother Hen said. “We have a plan. But for it to work, you have to listen very carefully.”

  Normally, it was Boxers’ job to set explosives. In fact, blowing stuff up ranked among his favorite things to do. Tonight, though, the task fell to Jonathan because he was smaller and he could move faster and more quietly. In fact, he’d been able to run the first two blocks out in the open, albeit in the shadows, but now that he was so close to his prey, he had to slow down and be extra careful.

  At an intersection three blocks west of the target house, he stopped completely, dropped to a knee, and flipped down his night vision goggles. Given the high levels of ambient light from the streetlamps, the NVGs were only moderately useful, but he’d take whatever advantage he could get. The nearest Mexican soldier should be only twenty or twenty-five yards away now. Jonathan pressed against the side of a pickup truck, and took time to survey his surroundings. For a long time—probably a minute—he saw no sign of the soldier he expected, and that concerned him. People who weren’t where they were supposed to be were by definition someplace where he wasn’t expecting them. He hated surprises.

  Then he saw the guy. He was crouched behind another vehicle, and from the way he stretched, Jonathan figured that his leg had cramped up on him. Relax, kid, Jonathan thought. You’ll be moving soon.

  Having left his ruck back with Boxers and Tristan, it was easy for Jonathan to lie on the ground next to the truck and prepare his charges. He’d stuffed his pockets with six GPCs—general purpose charges—which were wads of C-4 explosives with tails of detonating cord. Each packed a hell of a wallop, and in all the years he’d been using them, he’d never once experienced a failure. He pulled two from the thigh pocket of his trousers and pressed them into the wheel well of the pickup. He’d previously attached the electronic detonator and set the timer for seven minutes, a random number that he thought was sure to give him enough time to get back to the others before the show started.

  He gave the explosives a light tug to make sure that they would hold, and pressed the button to start the countdown.

  It wasn’t until he started to rise that he heard the footsteps approaching.

  Shit.

  “Hey, you!” someone called in Spanish. Jonathan knew without looking that it had to be the soldier. “What are you doing?”

  Jonathan didn’t move. On the ground, on his side, his back facing the approaching soldier, Jonathan was a scary curiosity—maybe an enemy, maybe a passed-out drunk. The soldier wouldn’t shoot until he was sure one way or the other. That bought time. Now Jonathan had to figure out what to do with it.

  Still on his side, he unclipped his rifle from its sling so that he’d have more mobility when he stood, and then he reached across with his right hand, unsnapped the strap that secured his KA-BAR knife to the scabbard on his left shoulder, and drew it. Gunshots at this moment would ruin everything.

  “You there,” the soldier said. “Stand up.”

  Jonathan didn’t move. The voice still sounded too far away. Much closer, though, and Jonathan’s clothing would give him away. Footsteps approached. Then they scraped to a halt and Jonathan heard the clatter of the guy’s weapon as he shouldered it.

  It was time.

  Jonathan spun from his side to his back, and as he did, he slashed the gleaming edge of his knife across the tendons behind the soldier’s knee. He dropped before his mind could register the pain, and as he fell, Jonathan sat up, pushed the soldier’s rifle to the side and slashed the knife across his wrist, severing the tendons that controlled his fingers. Without fingers, you can’t pull a trigger.

  Jonathan’s final slash opened a gaping smile in the soldier’s throat. Amid a fountain of blood, the soldier toppled to his side, dead.

  “Sorry, kid,” Jonathan said softly. Like soldiers everywhere, the youngest always died first. Inexperience bred hesitation—the deadliest of all weaknesses on a battlefield. In close-quarters battle, victory was won in the blink of time when questions formed in the other guy’s mind. In a fight with Jonathan, the odds were never evenly stacked. Even after so many years, though, he never got used to the killing.


  To become inured to that kind of violence would be to surrender your humanity.

  The clock ticked. In six and a half minutes there was going to be a crater where he was standing, and between now and then he had two more bombs to set.

  Big Guy was a scary, scary man. He reminded Tristan of one of the predatory animals you see on cable television. As Tristan sat on the ground, his knees up and his back against the house where Scorpion had checked his email, he could see the intensity of the Big Guy’s glare even in the dark. He seemed perfectly at rest balanced on one knee. His rifle wasn’t at his shoulder, but it might as well have been. He held it as if it weighed nothing, his hands loose on the grip and the barrel.

  There was a stillness about the Big Guy that seemed unnatural, or maybe supernatural. Only his head and eyes moved, and they moved constantly. Every time Tristan stirred, those eyes darted to him, and his spine melted. The man oozed lethality the way others oozed sweat on a hot day.

  If Tristan understood the plan he’d overheard, Scorpion was planting bombs around the neighborhood to distract the people who were trying to kill them. There’d be a total of three explosions, each of them drawing the bad guys—that’s what Scorpion actually called them, bad guys—in different and wrong directions.

  In the confusion, they would steal one of those army trucks—a Sandcat—to pick up somebody named Maria, and then yada, yada, yada, they’d be back safe in the United States.

  Less clear to him was that middle part, the yada, yada, yada. They must have worked that part out when he wasn’t listening. It had something to do with tunnels. Tristan didn’t know how to break it to them, but he had a real problem with claustrophobia. He didn’t do tight places at all. It’d been all he could do to keep from going bat-shit crazy when he was shackled to Allison in the bus.

  Jesus, how long ago was that? Was it only yesterday? Was that even possible?

  And how long had it been since he’d slept? Not the occasional dozing he’d been able to pull off at various times, but real sleep? Surely longer than a week.

  Just thinking about sleep made his eyelids heavy. He felt exhausted at a level that he’d never experienced. It was as if energy were held into your body by a spigot, and someone had twisted his all the way open. So tired that it hurt. As he closed his eyes, he wondered if he’d get in trouble for falling asleep at his post.

  As he listened to the sounds of the night and the rhythm of his own breathing, Tristan’s mind took him back home. He saw Mom praying in the dark and Ziggy trying his best just to be noticed. He wondered what she’d said when they told her he’d been kidnapped. When you already prayed ten hours a day, was it possible to find room for more?

  After they’d grown so far apart, would this nightmare bring them closer together? Even a little bit?

  Even as the question formed in his mind, he knew that the answer would be no. Like everything else, this would be written off as God’s will, another check mark on His shit list that included Dad’s cancer and Tristan’s problems in physics class. If you pray hard enough, you never have to confront anything difficult. You never worry about living or dying, winning or losing. All you have to do is pray for strength.

  A knot formed in his stomach as he imagined his homecoming. He’d have to explain to everyone how he’d lived while the others all died. Amid all those parents mourning the loss of their children, there would be no room for him to celebrate the fact that he’d survived. Everything he’d experienced these past twenty-four hours, from the shoot-outs to the plane crash to whatever lay ahead, would have to go unspoken. No one would ever be able to understand the intensity of the life that he’d lived since Scorpion and the Big Guy had pulled him from the bus.

  He’d never be able to confess that in the midst of all the terror and the bloodshed, there was real excitement. For this slice of time—and only for this slice of time, unique to his years on the planet—nothing had been predictable. Mere seconds separated boredom from mortal danger. No one would ever understand how even though the odds of survival were slim—well, they were what they were—he never thought about dying. He was too busy living.

  Too busy killing.

  When this chapter in his life closed, what could possibly replace it? Surely there had to be something.

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t in Scottsdale, and it for sure wasn’t in his house. If what Scorpion suspected proved to be correct, the Crystal Palace would collapse, and as it did, it would take Mom with it. That place was her life. Without it, Tristan didn’t think she’d have anywhere else to turn.

  And when she turned to him, he wouldn’t be there. He refused to walk that route. She was his past; something else entirely was his future. He didn’t know yet what that was—how can anyone know the future?—but he knew it wasn’t listening to a bitter old woman complain about the grave-like existence she’d carved for herself.

  When she turned to Ziggy, though, Tristan would try to help. Again, he didn’t know how, but the kid deserved better than that, even if he didn’t know it.

  A cold sense of hopelessness washed over Tristan as he thought these things, and he snapped his eyes open to return to the fears of the present. Those were the important ones to face, anyway.

  And if they screwed things up, the future wouldn’t matter, would it?

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Maria Elizondo couldn’t breathe. The stress of the darkness, the tightness of the space, and the sheer burden of the unknown had conspired to pull all the oxygen out of the air.

  Intuitively, she knew that was impossible, but as she sat crouched in this tiniest of tiny spaces, reason and logic seemed far away. The tunnel smelled of dirt, smelled like a grave. And how appropriate. This would be the night when she lived or died. Either a future lay ahead for her, or it did not.

  And it all depended on strangers. American strangers.

  Maria prayed. She prayed for strength and courage and for God to forgive the unrelenting anger that had consumed her all these years. She prayed that He would understand not having heard from her in so long, and that He would see that in her heart she was a good person. If, in fact, this was to be the night when she and Saint Peter made personal acquaintance, she prayed that this would be the first day of a blissful eternity, not a tormented one.

  According to Veronica, verified by the strange woman, Mother Hen, this tunnel would dump Maria in a storm sewer that ran under the alley behind her house. From there, she would need to find the ladder to a manhole, beyond which freedom lay. As a random thought, she offered up a separate prayer to thank God for not making it rain tonight. In this climate, the ground was so hard and impenetrable that even an inch of rain turned storm sewers into raging rivers.

  As she inched down the incline on her rear end, Maria ran the instructions from Mother Hen through her mind. There would be three explosions, and she was not to emerge from the manhole until after the third. She was to stay close to the manhole and await the arrival of a military vehicle. It would flash its lights twice. She was then to approach the vehicle and get in. There would be three American men in the vehicle, one much younger than the others. The older two were soldiers of a sort, and they would protect her as she led them to the tunnels that terminated inside the United States.

  “The FBI will be waiting for you on the other side,” Mother Hen explained. “They will take you into protective custody. They wanted me to stress to you that protective custody is not a form of arrest. It is for your own protection, to keep you from being harmed by Felix Hernandez’s friends. You’ll remain in custody for as long as it takes to convict Hernandez of his crimes.”

  “Will I be in a jail cell?”

  “You will be in a safe house,” Mother Hen said. “It’s a house like any other, but with guards and security systems.”

  The news had distressed her. When she thought about her upcoming time in the United States—the nation she’d heard so much about since the day she was born—she’d never thought in terms of security teams and restricted
movement. It made sense, she knew, but it was yet another reminder that none of the kindness or cooperation she would see in the future had anything to do with Maria the person. It would all be about Maria the witness.

  The end would be the same, yes: a future as an American citizen. It shouldn’t matter how the dream was achieved, so why did it make her sad to be treated as the witness she’d volunteered to be?

  Maria sensed in the darkness that the pitch of the incline was becoming more severe, and she found herself pressing hard with her hands and feet against the walls. She’d brought a tiny flashlight with her, one that she’d pulled from her keychain, but she dared not use it. She didn’t want to risk the possibility, however unlikely, of alerting a passing pedestrian or soldier to her presence by startling them with a flash of white light from beneath their feet.

  As the dirt became damp, she realized that she must be getting closer to the sewer. Closer to danger.

  Closer to freedom.

  How in the world had Felix been able to dig this tunnel without her knowing it? His teams must have done it only during the day when she was at work. And what was the purpose? Was he merely preserving his option for a midnight liaison at a time of his choice?

  Then she got it. It was the most obvious thing in the world when you thought about it. This was his planned escape route if his enemies arrived while he was visiting her, which he never did because when they were together, it was always at his hacienda. Such was not the case with his other mistresses, however. They were never trusted to be in the house, so he visited them in theirs, on occasion dismissing the mistresses’ husbands from their own beds.

  Could it be that each of them have tunnels built beneath their houses?

  Of course it could. For something to exist, Felix needed only wish that it be so, and it would appear.